Yes, I should say so. The wind here has been such today that I’ve had more wind energy in the last 24 hours than I’ve had in the preceding 12 months. According to the anenometer on the barn, we had gusts of up to 52mph. I was in the barn as a little of this was going on, a quick glance at the wattmeter attached to the ageing 400-watt Air 403 that I bought from Southwest Wind Power in Flagstaff, Arizona in 2002 was showing that at that particular moment I was receiving 280.3 watts of power and I have never before seen anything even approaching that amount of power.
And even as I type, I can hear the hollow tube of the turbine mount whining away, which means that the wind turbine is still churning it out. All in all I’m overwhelmed with this and I do wish that I could have this amount of wind every day.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the shelving unit is finished – or, at least, it’s finished as far as it will be for the next few days and I’ll add the doors and siding in due course.
It took me about 4 hours to finish it off and to screw it down, and the hardest job was to set it all in tension. It’s not just a floppy old wobbly shelf unit but something quite structural.
The shelving planks are a little warped but firstly, it’s cheap concrete shuttering that I buy at Brico Depot. Rough and ready, very solid, very thick, and very cheap. And secondly, of course, it’ll straighten itself out when it has some weight on it. I don’t mind it being like this at all – it’s not as if it’s for the inside of the house, of course.
When I finished it, I started to load it up, but called a halt for lunch – rather later than usual but I was enjoying myself.
After lunch and a brief siesta (I really don’t know what’s up with me these days) I went round to Liz and Terry’s with their Christmas presents, and they very kindly fed me and also loaded me up with a pile of goodies too, more of which tomorrow.
And now I’m back here. All of the alarms are switched off and I don’t intend to be doing anything for the foreseeable future. After the year that I’ve just had, I deserve a really long break.
